So, what do I love?

playing guitar
writing
writing songs
writing poetry
creativity-based counseling/mentoring
cooking
walking
sewing

Alright, so the theme, excepting walking, is creating stuff, whether it's music or poems or articles or meals or clothes or whatever else I dream up that I want to create. I have to be engaged in some kind of creative act or I'm not happy. No wonder I sucked at every job I ever had, save this last one, where I get to use my brain for whatever I want about half the time I'm there - and I get paid no less for using it.

So far I have managed to combine some of these loves quite nicely. Song-writing, for example. And writing about guitars. Poetry sometimes turns into lyrics, though not all that often. The mentoring part is cool; I get to help other people create their own stuff. Gotta love that.

Cooking is often compared to music - you lay down a groove, and play with ingredients and seasonings like they're notes or phrases. A stew becomes an edible jam session. A casserole is an ensemble piece. The dough rises like a saxophone solo. The colors in a soup become individual melodic lines. In the summer, we used to make Garden Soup. Fresh veggies, right out of the garden: green beans, peas, corn, onion, broccoli and cauliflower in a veggie or chicken stock, cooked until JUST tender, and then at the very end add a little red cabbage and a chopped up tomato, and the broth turns magenta, and all the colors sing like angels.

Sewing is also sort of a jam session; texture, color, pattern, detailing. There's a structure to a jacket, and very strict rules to follow so that it drapes a body properly, accentuating the curves of the body, drawing or deflecting attention at will, but the detailing is all about expression. I have fabric love. I love interesting textures and woven patterns. I love the way certain fabrics drape sensuously, while other fabrics freakin' testify. It's a marvel to me how it's all done, how the warp and weft of simple threads can result in such dramatically different looks and feels.

Walking, on the other hand, is like a spiritual thing. In my mind, Nature and God cannot be separated or distinguished, so walking out in the woods becomes very prayerful and meditative for me. I once stayed at a hermitage out in the woods for an entire week where there was a "labyrinth" that could be walked as a meditation. I must have walked that thing 100 times. It was bliss.

There are other things that I love, but these are the biggies, the ones I could be happy doing for the rest of my life. Okay, brain needs to settle a bit now.

Clear, like mud

So it's time for me to take an inventory, or several is more likely. What am I good at? What do I love to do? What are the things that I really hate doing, and how can I avoid having to do them ever again? What assets do I have? Which of those assets are useful in doing what I love and am good at, or avoiding what I hate to do?

I must confess, when I was a child, and friends wanted to play "house," I didn't want to be "the mommy." I wanted to be "the guitar player." My friends had no comprehension of what my role would be in these makeshift families (which seems to be the case for a lot of guitar players finding their way in the grown-up version of "house"), but that didn't dim my desire to play that roll. I've compromised the purity of that desire a bit in my life. I have been "mommy" and "bread winner" and "business partner" and "wife" and any number of other things. Lately, "writer" has kind of eclipsed "guitar player" and that's been okay. It seems to keep my Muses satisfied, though I do miss playing in front of an audience. Okay, in front of an appreciative audience that "gets" it. I don't miss playing in most bars and restaurants.

I suppose I still have an audience: the readers of Premier Guitar Magazine, and the few who read this blog. And people do write in or comment on the web site, and most of the time they're terrifically supportive and appreciative, and that's very nice, and the pay is comparable to gigging. Being able to hang out at home on the couch and turn my thoughts into revenue is just about the most wonderful thing I can imagine.

So writing goes into the "love" column, and hopefully it is high enough on the "good-at" scale for me to give it so grand of a place in my life.

Now I have to ask myself, how do I really feel about being "the guitar player?" Is it still the central fire around which my heart and soul turn? That, dear reader, requires some mulling.

Inspiration

I watched the movie "Julia and Julie" a couple nights ago. That's a really, really good movie, especially if you like cooking, eating and writing, which I do. Julie decides to work her way through Julia Child's famous cookbook and blog about it, gets a huge following and a book deal and eventually gets her book made into a movie (yes, this very movie, a self-referential autobiographical film, gotta love that).

The movie made me want to cook (with butter) and eat (stuff made with butter) and write (hold the butter) and think, which is even more important. My thoughts are scattered and struggling to organize, but they're generally about reinvention. I just turned 45, which is probably just about mid-life for me (most of the women in my family live into their 90s) so it's time I got this puzzle put together, got this life figured out, sorted my ambitions and my drives and my loves and my needs into a workable, flexible, creatively-driven matrix that I can live and work in happily.

If I figure out how to do that, I'll write a damn book. In the meantime, I will continue to think and write, and will try not to eat so much butter that I explode.

Winter is here

So much for the weather folks predicting a mild winter. NOT. It's been snowing on and off all day, we've probably got eight inches now and it hasn't even kicked into blizzard-mode yet. Supposed to get REALLY nasty tonight. Great. I've asked a friend with 4 wheel drive to get me to work tomorrow.

I'm trying to introduce a new word into the culture - "snomance." Say it with me, "snomance." As in "This snomance is SO OVER." Work with me people. If "staycation" and "frenemies" can make it into the dictionary, "snomance" has got to be next. Then on to "guitargasmic."

I haven't finished any of those songs I started - just dealing with life, the universe and everything. It'll happen. It's not like I have any gigs to play any songs at anyway. Gotta do something about that.

Creative phase has kicked into gear I guess...

So, I got a little riff for another sort of schmaltzy song last night, don't ask me how... it's pretty entertaining though. Well, no, it's sort of dark and strangely pretty... we'll see how it goes.

The other song I've got in the oven is kind of stuck at the moment, though I'm trying to push it through. I got a consult on it yesterday from a fellow songwriter. I'm trying to decide if it needs a bridge, and if so, where the hell does it take you, and do you really want to go there, and how do you get back from there if you don't like it? The song is about lovers who are crazy about each other, and the way everybody can see it even when they're on opposite sides of a room, and how they are so connected that each knows when the other is thinking of them. Gooey romantic stuff, yes... but that's what the song wanted and I must obey. My muses must be in love. So my confusion was with the idea that a bridge is often a contrast or a resolution, or some kind of other perspective that reveals something the listener maybe didn't know, and with this song, there's not much of a need for resolution or contrast. My songwriting counselor suggested I play the chords with different voicings, even above the 12th fret, for the needed musical contrast (the chords are very rich and there are lots of common tones, melody wanders a bit, too) and skip the bridgey bit. I'll try that tonight and see how it works.

There's a meeting of the National League of American Pen Women tomorrow, and I really want to go, but I have a sore throat, so I may have to stay home and be pathetic. Sigh.

Guitary news

Yes, the Taylor 8-string baritone is quite a remarkable beastie! Lovely.

The Martin OMC-LJ Pro Laurence Juber Custom Artist is... incredible. Just amazing. It's everything you want and it's pretty, and it smells so nice. I have been playing it every day for lengths of time that my family is finding rather annoying, and honestly I don't care. They can all bite me. This guitar is just awesome.

So I've stolen a couple songs out of it. Actually, that's not entirely true. I had ideas of them both in my mind, and this guitar gave me the creative juice to develop them. And the desire to sit and play with the ideas for hours in order to do that.

Okay, must clean house, people showing up tomorrow and yikes, it looks like creative people live here. Horrors.

Boy, time flies

Okay, update... I left my full time position as Managing Editor of Premier Guitar for the much more flexible and much less stressful Acoustic Editor position, which Joe and I invented. It's a better gig, I can work from home and I'm a much happier person.

Still working at playing the Telecaster, but it's slow going. Lots of stuff going on in the personal life, some good, some hard, some weird, some frustrating... many long tales to tell that I won't trouble you with here. Suffice to say, life is interesting. I have written 2 songs on it, and I like them. So that's good. One is kind of a bluesy rocker, one is sort of a ballady thing.

Reviewing a Taylor 8-string baritone guitar, and expecting a Martin LJ-Pro to come tomorrow for review. I have Pat Smith's Lowden baritone to play with while he's away this month, and I am liking it quite a bit.